Through tomorrow, the largest-ever gathering of K-12 school administrators, teachers, students and parents is being held in Denver. Called the Green Schools National Conference, one of its three stated goals — which also includes saving money and the planet — is saving kids by focusing efforts on healthier foods in schools.

One of the best ways to get your kids to eat healthier is to lead by example — but you can also offer better choices in their lunches. Boulder chef Ann Cooper, also known as the Renegade Lunch Lady, has long been an advocate for better school lunches, and she’s a keynote speaker at the conference.

Cooper founded the nonprofit Food Family Farming Foundation (F3) to help focus on solutions to the school food crisis, and she has a million great ideas for ways to sneak better ingredients and dishes into kids’ lunches from home.

“First of all, if you want the kids to actually eat, they need to participate,” Cooper says. “And additionally, lunch is very rushed, so they don’t have a lot of time.” To address the first issue, Cooper recommends asking your kids for suggestions, as well as for help in packing their lunches. For elementary ages, it’s enough to solicit input and getting some assistance with packaging. Older kids, though, should be choosing most of their foods and doing the heavy lifting.

“By the time they’re in middle school, they should be packing their own lunch,” Cooper says. “The challenge is, how do you get them to eat what’s packed and not get them to eat only junk food? They had to have been eating healthy all along. You can’t just imagine they’re going to wake up one day and stop eating chicken nuggets.”

Cooper’s savviest advice is to take advantage of leftovers. “One of the things I hear a lot is that mornings are just hell,” she says. “Trying to get the kids out the door and make breakfast and sandwiches, etcetera. So the night before, if you’re roasting a chicken, make a little chicken salad as you’re putting it away Or there’s no reason they can’t just have a hunk of cold roast chicken with some fruit on the side.”

She also points out that it’s crucial to keep cold things cold and hot things hot. “Remember that the lunches are usually sitting in a warm corner of the classroom, so you really need to think about thermal containers or ice packs, and if something’s going to be hot, if you want to send soup or stew or chili, that you really have good thermoses,” she says.

Here are a few more tips from the Renegade Lunch Lady:

• Get a reusable container with multiple compartments that will hold a variety. Cooper likes the bento-box style made by Laptop Lunches (laptoplunches.com). “Fill it up with small bits of things, things they help choose and cut up themselves,” she says.

• Wraps are particularly easy to eat, keep well and can be filled with a variety of combinations — peanut butter, nuts and honey, cream cheese and vegetables, sautéed vegetables and chopped lettuce.

• Elementary age kids like to have lots of flavors and items. “Some fruits with a little yogurt dip and some veggies with a little dressing dip will be great for this age,” Cooper says. “A little gorp, too, if they aren’t allergic to nuts. Little kids want choices.”

• Take gender into account. For instance, in middle school, girls eat differently from boys, Cooper says. “They still like lots of little things to dip and dunk, but guys are much more about some volume of stuff, things like roast chicken, any kind of pasta dishes. Burritos can be really good in a packed lunch, even cold.”

It’s a stretch. It might feel as though the sweaty sojourn from your car to the lift-ticket window in your ski boots is enough of a warm-up to prevent injury, but not so, says David Mack, director of wellness education and programming at the Denver Athletic Club.

He says skiers and snowboarders may even think that swinging your legs during the ride up on the chairlift and a groomer run will do it, but that’s not enough, either. “It actually jams lactic acid into your legs,” Mack says. “And then you’re just perfectly set up for an injury.”

The answer is “dynamic stretching,” the type of stretching that uses movement and momentum that’s active rather than static — and avoids holding the stretch at the end. “It may look super-ridiculous,” he says, “but you can do it in the parking lot and it will make all the difference, I promise.”

Mack suggests incorporating front lunges with a rotation — which simply means holding the lunge in the bent-down position and pivoting from just your mid-spine and shoulder up, alternating sides with each lung.

He also likes what he calls “a side lunge with a Mr. T into a John Travolta.” He explains that you should picture a “T” stance with one leg balanced and one stuck out, and then lunge to the side onto the leg that’s sticking out. “then go into your best John Travolta ‘Saturday Night Fever’ move,’ Mac says. “It’ll get you opening up your hips and shoulders.” Whatever you do, though, just don’t hold the stretch.

From there, Mack recommends that you still take a couple of nice, easy runs to make a smooth transition from warming up to going full bore. “Don’t just jump into a mogul field,” he says. “But you probably won’t have that burning in your legs if you’ve done these stretches.”

What do you do in a rental market where seemingly every new apartment building is offering a boatload of amenities and high-end finishes? If you're Charleston, S.C.-based apartment developer Greystar you double down and build an extra luxury project.